The Chestnut Tree Cafe

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Eight years ago, those who supported one B. Obama were beside themselves with happiness, seeing hopey-changey rainbows all over the sky. Those few of them who were smart enough to be capable of disappointment soon exercised that capability, as their somewhat-black hero turned out to be another warmongering corporate puppet. For the rest: well, limited attention spans do offer some comforting compensations, and and and ... y'know, gay marriage! Yeah!

But ... came 2016, and the Trumpster, and by gawd, Middle America stood right up, mad as hell, not gonna take it any more, build the wall, drain the swamp, lock her up, and so on. And Trump won the presidency, and all of a sudden, hey, it's 2008 all over again! A somewhat different group is giddy with happiness! Hope & change are in the air again!

And, a couple of weeks post-election, and about two months pre-inauguration, our glorious president-elect and Artist of the Deal has declared that the generally-acknowledged criminal suspect Hillary Clinton won't be facing any sort of criminal prosecution. And pray tell, Il Duce-to-be, why is that? Well, he wants her to heal. She's been through a tough time.

The Sovereign has spoken.

Gee. Nice.

So, how great are the differences between Obummer and the Trumpster? That has yet to be seen. But we've already seen a significant resemblance. Mrs. Clinton evaded the vengeance of the law under Obummer because it was His Royal Pleasure that she should do so. Now, Mrs. Clinton will continue to be immune from Our Majestic Laws because it is His Excellency Lord Trump's pleasure that she shall continue to do so.

One standard of criminal accountability for you and for me and for the rest of the little people; and a very different standard for The Connected. Yesterday, today, and forever. Yep, things sure are different, now that we Amur'kans elected Trump! In yet another Very Most Important, and Critical, and Crucial, Election Evarrrrrr. Sure wish I'd voted. 'Cause if I had've, things would be really, really different.

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

News flash: this post is being written in a Starbucks, on my way back from my annual Texas trip (you know, Tour de Gruene, etc.). Oh, the wonders of this modern world! Why, I'm almost in the 21st century now!

Yes, I know I've been absent for a long time now. Slacking. Actually, given the events of the past year-and-a-half, just haven't known where to start. I still don't know, really. But since everyone's weeping or gloating over yesterday's Big Show, I thought I'd jump back in, at least one post's worth.

On the whole, I applaud yesterday's result. No, I didn't vote for Trump (perish the thought of my voting, please!). No, I don't support Trump. No, I don't like Trump. Trump's a clown, and a garishly sleazy one at that. There, now that's over with.

Then, there was the alternative. First woman president? More of a female impersonator, as far as I can tell. Desperately corrupt. Plenty of that above-the-law entitlement. A much more convincing warmonger than Trump. And, based on history, completely impeachment-proof. Can't say that about Trump ... since 110% of the Democratic Party, 108% of the moribund news media, and 96% of the GOP all hate him, I half-expect him to be impeached on Inauguration Day, by late afternoon. (Pence, "my" former Guv'nor here in Indiana, has already demonstrated here that he's a cowardly windvane; the Uniparty will have no trouble in managing him.) On the other hand, Our Supervisors may not bother with an impeachment process. I'm sure that CIA or one of the many other alphabet-soup outfits already have a contingency plan or three all ready to go, to give him a JFK-style removal from office. If I were Trump -- and I'm very glad I'm not -- I'd make sure to have a ring of physical security, chosen and paid by me, between me and the Secret "Service."

So, what happens in a Trump regime? I'm not at all sure. Most likely, it will turn out that he wasn't serious about much that he said -- even assuming that he can remember it. Based on his victory remarks, my guess is that he'll make nice with the rest of the ruling class, and perhaps get along very well indeed. If he tries to implement any significant fraction of his campaign themes, particularly having to do with establishing a measure of control along the southern US border, he'll be reminded of the 110%, the 108%, and the 96% delineated above.

The first thing I'm curious about is what happens to the Clinton organized crime enterprise (to include the Podestas and Abedin-Wieners therein, not to mention the pseudonymously-emailing outgoing El Presidente). I see three possibilities. One: Obomber pardons one and all on his way out. If that doesn't happen, we'll get a quick read on whether Trump's going to try to be serious, or not. If he is, there'll be a full-up, serious, prison-time sort of investigation/prosecution. If not -- and I think this is more likely -- he'll make nice, water under the bridge, let's move along. We shall see.

Finally, I must admit that I'm by no means above the base satisfactions of Schadenfreude. If I had been a voter, I'd have been sorely tempted to vote Trump, simply for the low pleasure of seeing so much displeasure among so many whose displeasure is a source of unworthy satisfaction to me. I didn't, so I once again successfully resisted temptation. Still, I'll have to admit that I've had several chuckles already today. And, as far as I know, the pathetic George Will hasn't even checked in yet! I'm sure I have some guilty pleasures still in store. Do you suppose he'll showily leave the country? Cool.

Saturday, July 04, 2015

No flags here. No red-white-and-blue. Not going to try to wax sentimental over any bloodstained idols. As it happens, though, this morning was easily the best morning we've had all year, so far, for going out for a bike ride. Temperature when I left, not long after sunrise, was low-to-mid 60s, no rain, very little wind, and not much four-wheeled traffic. I rode a 34-mile loop in east Allen County. Come along and enjoy it with me.

About a tenth of a mile down the road from my house is what I still think of as Opliger's pond, although I believe the retired judge owns it now.

Plenty of algae on the pond. "Algae" sounds better then "scum," doesn't it?

My road is now "chip-and-seal." Looks like gravel, but behaves better.

By the time I get here, I'm clipped in and thinking about a short but steep hill I have to climb to get out "to the world."

North of the town of Grabill, I'm eastbound on Hurshtown Road where it takes a little jog and crosses Roth Road. I don't ride on Roth ... too much fast car, and truck, traffic, and no shoulder to speak of. I go farther east, until I get to Bull Rapids Road. Poor pavement and one troublesome dog, but little traffic. Seems healthier.

As quiet as it was this morning, Roth probably would've been okay. But I crossed it and went my usual way.

Going south on Bull Rapids, then back west on Antwerp Road, we come to the bustling metropolis of Harlan. Lots of times, I fall into a trap here, called the Harlan Bakery, which is something that, when the wind conditions are right, you can smell at least a mile down the road. And it doesn't smell bad, either, believe me. However, I discovered this morning that my route through here has become safer. The Harlan bakery has moved to a new location, a bit southwest of town on highway 37. That's either too far away for me to smell, or they may not be making donuts on this Fourth-of-July morning. In any case, I escaped without snarfing down a donut. Good for me. No, let's be honest: rats!

Looking down Highway 37 in the central business district of Harlan. It seems that most everyone's still sleeping.

Westbound on Antwerp Road, toward Schwartz, there are Amish farms on both sides. And Amish farms mean plenty of horses.

Looks like a smaller horse is hiding behind one of the larger ones. We're south (and still east) of Grabill now, but you can see the town's water tower on the skyline, some miles away.

There's that smaller horse! All I had to do was wait a second.

These horses work for their living, but their working conditions don't seem too hateful, and apparently it isn't starting time yet. They all seem to be "on break."

A bit farther west, another group of horses are pursuing their equine business farther back from the road, in some pasture that's grown up high enough to halfway hide them behind the golden tops of whatever-it-is. With the morning sun lighting up that gold, I evaluated a photo stop as being mandatory, pretty much.

These guys are up to their ... well, I'm a city boy, and don't know my horse parts so well. They're up to their bellies, more or less, in golden stuff that looks good enough to eat. It appears that they think so, too.

At this point, I was hungry, so I proceeded down Schwartz Road to a commercial development called "Chapel Ridge" at the edge of Fort Wayne, where I purchased and consumed some people rations. Typical stupid developer's name, that ... very few chapels, and no ridge at all. Crazy. I mean, they should have gone all out and called it "The Lakes at Chapel Ridge," since there's also no lakes. Anyway, after that, I rode on home, committing no further photography. It was a very pleasant ride, though. Thanks for coming along!

Monday, June 22, 2015

This past Saturday, the leftovers from tropical storm "Bill" found their way up the Ohio River valley and got northern Kentucky more than a little wet. This had some effect on me, as Saturday was the day of the Preservation Pedal, heading out from Frankfort, Kentucky.

Friday night at the packet pickup, the ride organizers from the Bluegrass Cycling Club told us that the 102-mile century route would be closed by the weather, with its attendant possibility of local road flooding. So how do you "close" a hundred miles of small public roads? They don't, of course; what they did was simply to not support that route with rest/food stops and SAG. The club elected to shift their volunteer force over to the 30-mile and 51-mile routes and support them. Century riders could get 102 miles in by the simple expedient of making two laps of the 51-mile loop. The Kentucky Century Challenge folks also announced that people participating in the Challenge, who has already registered and paid for the Preservation Pedal, could elect to ride another century of their choice at any time before July 26 for KCC credit, and also that those already-registered and paid riders could ride the Preservation Pedal in whatever conditions occurred Saturday morning, and that a good-faith effort would also receive KCC credit, regardless of the distance covered. Fair enough, thought I, and went to the luxurious Baymont Inn to put my head down and sleep.

So, Saturday morning. It was raining steadily, and the forecast wasn't good, calling for afternoon thunderstorms. At 8 o'clock, however, we (and it was a very small group, on the order of a hundred riders) set out from the Plaza Hotel in downtown Frankfort and began the process of stringing ourselves out over 51 miles of wet roads. It didn't take long to get lonely, either; after the first rest stop, in Millville, I was usually not within sight of any other cyclists. This meant that I was totally responsible for my own navigation, which consisted of following the red pavement arrows (since my cue sheet had very quickly been reduced to wet pulp in my jersey pocket). With no one to follow in lemming-like fashion, I paid very close attention to those markers and succeeded in never getting off-route, although I did cast about in some confusion after leaving the stop in the town of Stamping Ground, where the markers were scarce and hard to see on the water-covered pavement, leaving me without much confidence for a while.

You've probably already noticed a lack of photos in this report. In view of the downpour conditions, I left the camera that I carried around last month's Horsey Hundred locked in my truck back in Frankfort. I was carrying my mobile phone, of course, in case of emergency, but I wasn't pulling it out of the zippered pocket of my hydration backpack in that much of a rain. I did pull it out after I got back to Frankfort, and that's coming up.

Riding in a hard rain was a new experience for me. We had rain at this year's Redbud Ride, and it was a pretty chilly rain at that. But this was serious rain, hard and fast. By the time I'd completed my first mile, I was as wet as I was going to get, so I figured it wouldn't get any worse. I was mistaken. My bike shorts are the kind that have a loose, baggy outer shell, making them suitable attire for an over-aged and over-nourished cyclist like me. When those shorts got and stayed soaked, that outer shell plastered itself to my legs and I got some chafing just above the knees. No big deal, but uncomfortable. Also, there's the rain in your face. Grinding slowly up the long climbs, at seven or eight miles per hour, the rain on my face troubled me not at all, and was even welcome as it helped me stay cool; but on the downhills, sometimes at or above 30 miles per hour, those raindrops felt more like small pebbles, and they also made it very hard to see.

I have battery-powered lamps on my bike: a red taillight, which can be set to blink obnoxiously, and a white LED headlight which can also blink stroboscopically. The headlight worked fine in the rain. But the taillight ... after a while, it got partly filled with rainwater and worked only intermittently. In the gray, low-visibility surroundings, I wasn't liking that; it seemed like a substantial safety issue. I also didn't feel good about how few riders were participating. In a large, organized ride with one or two thousand riders, you always have more than a few in sight, and there's a "critical mass" of you on the road that makes you safer, as the drivers pretty much have to be aware that there's a cycle event underway. But on Saturday, there were so few of us that each rider was like an eccentric individual. For each car that passed me, I had the feeling that there was a good chance I was the first cyclist the driver had seen that day; and if I was hard to see, well, that's potentially not good.

So, a little before noon I re-entered downtown Frankfort. The major food for the whole ride was located there, at the Church of the Ascension, the home of a Greek Orthodox congregation founded, according to a banner I was admiring, in 1836. I ate my lunch standing up (the chairs in the fellowship hall were upholstered, and I didn't feel like sitting my dripping-wet butt down on one), and listened to the talk around me, and it seemed nearly unanimous: no one was electing to ride a second lap. Someone had seen a radar map that showed an intense thunderstorm cell in Louisville that was heading our way. I thought about how the course would be if, instead of a hundred riders stretched out along it, there were only ten or twenty. I thought about my now non-working taillight. I thought about the possibility of upcoming thunder and lightning. And, yes, I must admit that I thought about the cyclist who was killed last month in the Horsey Hundred, not so far from here. Then I joined the discretion-is-the-better-part-of-valor crowd, checked in my 51 miles at the KCC table, and started to leave. Then I thought: wait a minute, I should dig out my cell phone and take a picture of that gorgeous stained-glass window. And I did that thing.

Somebody did some awfully nice work. Sorry I kind of cut the top off. I should've backed up another few steps.

You know, most days, it doesn't rain. I'm going to appreciate those days more, going forward.

A couple of years ago, I purchased a custom bumper sticker online from Cafe Press and put it on the rear window of my pickup truck's cab. At the time, I assumed that my truck would quickly be keyed, and that I'd see many fists shaken, and many one-finger salutes, from the Real, Red-State 'Murkins among whom I live.

Oddly, none of that has happened. Perhaps I should say "that I know of" ... you see, the rusty paint on my truck is such that I'm not apt to notice a "key" job. Somebody would need to use a chainsaw or a hammer and cold chisel, in all likelihood. And I did have one lady pull up next to me at a stoplight and yell across to me that she liked the sticker, which was encouraging. But this past Friday morning, I came out of the YMCA and jumped in my truck, and then noticed that someone had put a note under the wiper on my side. Climbing out and retrieving it, I saw:

Is that good, or what?

By the way, I have to say that, based on an extensive sample size of two, the women seem to be the ones who have some sense. My hat's off to you ladies.

Saturday, June 06, 2015

I followed a link the other day to an interesting piece of writing -- where "interesting" includes a substantial element of "horrifying," that is. As a result of my reading, I'm trying to do a few things to decrease my exposure to online surveillance, both governmental and corporate (not that there's any meaningful distinction between the two, of course). Concerning Facebook, the author says:

STEP 8 – SHUN SURVEILLANCE-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA

Why: Many people in this world are lonely. “Free”
social networks like Facebook are designed to capitalize on this. In
return for helping you feel connected to others, they study you like a
lab rat and turn you into a product. I’m not exaggerating. As the
founder of Facebook said, “They ‘trust me’ – dumb fucks.” Meanwhile he surrounds his home with empty lots and hundreds of acres of undeveloped land.

Facebook’s “like” system is designed to reinforce whatever your existing beliefs are.
Facebook is engineered to be a giant echo chamber which figures out
what you like to hear so it can feed it to you. That’s how it hooks
people.

It’s also the ultimate propaganda system. Recall Facebook’s notorious social engineering experiment
which proved it could manipulate the mood of over half a million people
by altering their feeds. The experiment received funding from the US
Army Research office. The military funds research on the mass
manipulation of a population’s mood? You don’t say.

Facebook has developed software as accurate as the human brain to reveal your identity in any photo you or someone else uploads. And yes, even 4 years ago Facebook was tracking you
and assembling hundreds of pages of intel on you even when you weren’t
logged in. Now it’s thousands of pages, and the surveillance and
analysis are much more sophisticated.

Every time people post photos of themselves and others to Facebook, Instagram (owned by Facebook), Twitter, Google,
or other surveillance-based services, they are unwittingly building
mass surveillance databases containing the details of people’s
appearances, who they associate with, what they do, and when and where
they’ve been.

A single innocuous photo can reveal a lot of information. Trillions of photos
is a frightfully vast surveillance database to be exploited by regimes,
corporations, and free agent bad guys. Mass surveillance depends on social media as a primary data source.

Every American technology mega-corp has backdoors.
Snowden made it clear: Tech giants are surveillance proxies for the
government. The government’s own top secret slide is worth repeating
here as it just says it all.

The mass surveillance-industrial complex

To put it plainly, Facebook and other “free” social
media services are mass surveillance roach motels. Free is the bait to
get you in the door, and surveillance intel is used to hook you on the
service so you can become a forever profitable product. Yes they are
slickly marketed, convenient, and ultra-popular. They are also a trap
and indispensable to the mass surveillance scaffolding. Check out of the roach motel.

In several ways, I'll miss Facebook. It enabled me to re-connect with more than a few people with whom I hadn't communicated in decades. But, with a "patriotic" pseudoholiday (Memorial Day) just being over, I'm aware of a side benefit of leaving the Facebook world: there's a great deal of crap that some of my Facebook friends love to "share" that will no longer be making my newsfeed a burden to me ... now that I no longer have a newsfeed. Many, many exhortations to honor The Holy Troops. Lots of people's convictions that the very existence of Muslims somehow victimizes them. An astonishing number of people sharing waspishly-political crap from something called "I F--king Love Science" (and, you know, I really greatly doubt whether these folks have even so much as mild affection for actual, it-takes-work-and-mathematics-type science, sexually active or not). Yes, kicking the FB habit will have its compensations.

About Me

I'm a 62-year old retired optical engineer. Physically, I'm located near Fort Wayne, Indiana with my lovely and patient wife of 41 years' standing. My true home, however, is Reactionary Utopia. I have two grown children, and two cats who are fairly dubious about each other.